Passenger bridges are sufficiently known from the prior art. Passenger bridges serve the passage of persons from the aircraft directly into the airport building. Since the airport building is frequently higher than the door opening of the aircraft, the passenger bridges, which are held by a traveling mechanism at the front end, frequently extend at a downward slope in the direction toward the door opening of the aircraft. The passenger bridge has a cabin at the lower end of the passenger bridge which is pivotable about a vertical axis by up to 90° with respect to the longitudinal axis of the passenger bridge. The coupling module is arranged at the front end for the passage from the cabin into the aircraft (see WO00/76487 A2). U.S. Pat. No. 2002/0116771 A1 and DE 10046010 A1 show a similar design of a passenger bridge. U.S. Pat. No. 4,559,660 likewise shows a cabin pivotable about a vertical axis. It has already been pointed out that the passenger bridge extends downwardly to the body of the aircraft. Consequently, the coupling module, which is arranged at the cabin and which has a floor which is spanned in a U shape by an extendable projecting roof, contacts the outer skin of the aircraft at an oblique angle to the aircraft with its bumper arranged at the end face of the projecting roof.
Coupling modules are likewise known having a projecting roof and a floor, wherein the floor is movably supported in the coupling module about the central longitudinal axis. The pivotably movable arrangement of the floor in the coupling module is complex and/or expensive.
A whole number of aircraft have a roof rail above the entrance. Due to the obliquely extending passenger bridge and, corresponding to this, due to the oblique position of the coupling module, when the bellows contacts the bumper arranged at the front side, the bumper frequently contacts the roof rail at the right hand side in a plan view of the aircraft door and projects upwardly over the contour of the aircraft at the left hand side. This is in particular the case with smaller aircraft whose contour slopes downward toward the cockpit in the region of the front door directly after the door. Consequently, the bumper on the right hand side of the door opening, which lies on the roof rail, is subject to relatively rapid wear and forms an opening with the outer skin of the aircraft at the left hand side through which rain, snow, etc. can enter.
It is proposed in accordance with EP 2 397 411 B1 to remedy these problems by providing a coupling module that is held by the cabin of the passenger bridge and pivotable about the horizontally extending central longitudinal axis. The coupling module is pivotable along an arc of a circle at the cabin of the passenger bridge such that the upper edge of the bumper of the coupling module can always be aligned exactly in parallel with the aircraft door. This means that the upper edge of the opening of the aircraft door serves as a reference line for the alignment of the coupling module. In this respect the floor of the coupling module can be in a fixed position, which has a positive effect on-the costs. A fixed floor for a coupling module as an interface is known from EP 2 463 199 B1 in this connection which, however, has individual segments extensible in the direction of the aircraft to adapt the floor to the contour of the aircraft. If, however, the coupling module is aligned in parallel with the upper edge of the door opening, this reduces the wear at the bumper, on the one hand, and makes provision, on the other hand, that the bumper contacts the outer skin of the aircraft in a circumferentially impervious manner in the region of the door opening of the aircraft.
The coupling module in accordance with EP 2 397 411 B1 has proven very good in daily use, but the, in particular, vertical extent of this coupling module is a disadvantage, as also with every other coupling module. The vertical extent or height of the coupling module amounts to approximately 3.70 m. The transportation of such a coupling module in the assembled state is very complex in that no standard containers can be used for the transportation. To this extent, a change has also been made to dispatch the coupling module in the dismantled state, which has the disadvantage, however, that it has to be assembled on site. Due to the large number of individual parts and to the complexity of the design, and here in particular of the pivot device, it has been found to be necessary that in many cases the installation of the coupling module for such a passenger bridge has to be monitored on site by personnel from the manufacturer. This is expensive and ultimately also ties up staff.